Gaborone, October 31, 2008 -- Doing Business 2009, a World Bank-International Finance Corporation report that measures the ease of doing business globally, reports that between June 2007 and 2008 Botswana reformed in three of the 10 areas studied.
The country ranked seventh among the world’s top 10 regulatory reformers, and rose from 52 to 38 in overall reforms. Botswana made trade and the process of business start-ups easier through computerization and the Companies Act 2003, which strengthened investor protection.
On October 23, in partnership with the Botswana Development Information Center and its host the Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis (BIDPA), the World Bank country office in Gaborone held a dialogue to discuss the results of the Doing Business report.
Panelists included Banny K. Molosiwa, Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Trade and Industry; Happy Fidzani, BIDPA executive director; Maria Machailo-Ellis, CEO of the Botswana Confederation of Commerce, Industry and Manpower (BOCCIUM);Bernard Drum, lead private sector development specialist at the World Bank office in Pretoria, South Africa;and the event’s main speaker Dahlia Khalifa, strategic advisor on Doing Business for the World Bank and IFC.
About 80 audience members, including representatives from the European Union in Botswana, the Ministry of Finance and Planning, the Southern African Development Community secretariat and the media, gathered to hear Khalifa’s presentation. A period of questions and answers followed.
"Botswana has one of the best macroeconomic environments but does not get Foreign Direct Investments” said BIDPA’s Fidzani, highlighting Botswana’s shortcomings in the report. “It is locked in a mono-cultural economy and the economic base is still narrow."
According to Fidzani, there should be a one stop shop that brings all business procedures under one roof. And, because Botswana is a landlocked country, he said, trading across borders is essential.
The Ministry of Trade and Industry is currently working on a plan to streamline business starting procedures, according to government officials.
Despite concerns about the needed reform, the country is doing well in spite of a lack of foreign investment, said Molosiwa, from the Trade Ministry. "BIDPA and the World Bank need to look in to that and identify what the problem is," she said.
According to Machailo-Ellis of BOCCIUM, reforms and investment go hand in hand. Limitations on reforms, she said, are impacting investment.
“There is a need to reconcile the theory and the practicality,” she said. “On the ground the reality is different; there are new reforms, however this must be turned into reality.”
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